


love is like the wild rose-briar

by wearethewitches



Series: holly and rose-briar [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Maleficent (Disney Movies)
Genre: Adoption, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Dimension Travel, Fairy Tale Elements, First Meetings, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Indian Harry Potter, Tumblr Rec
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-28
Updated: 2020-06-28
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:14:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24953605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wearethewitches/pseuds/wearethewitches
Summary: In the Moors, there are such things as fairy rings - and it just so happens that a young boy has a knack for finding them.or, Harry Potter travels through fairy rings to the Moors again and again, until Maleficent finally decides to keep him.
Relationships: Diaval/Maleficent (Disney), Maleficent (Disney) & Harry Potter
Series: holly and rose-briar [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1806016
Comments: 17
Kudos: 376





	love is like the wild rose-briar

In the Moors, there are such things as _fairy rings._

Maleficent does her best to stop their construction, usually, for the security of the Moors. During her dark reign, they were outright banned and despite Aurora loosening the reigns, curious at the idea, the fairies aren’t prone to making them often anymore. Fairy rings are portals, circles imbued with magic that have the capability to transport a being from one place to another – it’s not that hard.

The only catch is the destination.

Fairy rings can lead anywhere in the whole, wide universe, into different realms and times, _far_ from the original site. Unless you’re proficient in magic – or at least, particularly _powerful_ – the existence of a fairy ring is the least of your concern, as it will always take you from a single point to another and back again. Maleficent knows from experience that magic-users, such as herself, can manipulate the end and entry points of a portal, a hazardous choice if you do not bring the entire route with you on the way. You would lose your only chance to return, parted from the fairy ring meant to be on the other side.

Above her head, Diaval caws in Raven-shape, drifting down to the ground and hopping between two feet. It is amusing as it is familiar. Maleficent raises her hand, the warmth of her magic drifting across to encase him, shifting him into the form of a Man. Diaval’s energy is clear, his movements swift as he speaks to her swiftly.

“A little boy has found his way into the Moors unaccompanied. He is such a young ‘un, Mistress – I had the water sprites watch him while I came to find you.”

“A Human child?” Maleficent queries, stretching out her wings as she stands, feathers fluttering in the breeze. “Show me.”

Diaval returns to Raven-shape in an instant at her command, gold dust falling around his sable wings as they both take to the sky. Diaval does not lead her far, only past a single mountain and then down, to the dirt-strewn sands of a beach, the trickling stream glittering in the midday sun. Swooping down, landing gently, Maleficent cannot help the long shadow that stretches across the idyllic clearing, her eyes falling on the young Human child who plays in the shallow water.

 _He is quieter than Aurora,_ is Maleficent’s first thought, seeing how his impossibly fluorescent tunic soaks into an emerald shade that matches his eyes. “Young, like you said,” Maleficent murmurs to Diaval, wishing for his company, so his squawks might not disturb the boy.

He stands beside her, watching as she does. “Aye.” Across the stream, they both see the water sprites that have hidden behind a boulder, ceasing their working and playing. It makes the clearing seem…bereft. Maleficent wishes they would come out and fly across the water as they would on a normal afternoon, making the stream sparkle and shine.

The boy picks up a small rock, staring at it for a mere moment before stuffing it in his mouth, the rasp of teeth on stone audible. Maleficent cringes, gliding forwards in a moment to crouch by his side, one of her wings dipping in the water as she puts a hand on his back, the other reaching to take the rock from his mouth.

“No, child,” she says gently, realising just how small he is. Closer than before, Maleficent sees his small face and guesses him to be three summers – perhaps four. He startles at her touch, face screwing up in a way that makes Maleficent feel wary. But he does not cry, only closing his eyes tightly… _waiting._

Cautious, she puts the rock back in the stream, eyes travelling over his delicate square jaw and tiny nose – the rune-shaped scar on his forehead catching her attention where it hides behind a dark fringe of black, unruly hair. Maleficent reaches out, brushing it aside to see the scar, where it sits red and fresh on his skin.

“Did you hurt yourself?” Maleficent mutters, almost to herself, fingers grazing the surface. A moment later, she sees a vision of bright, evil green and the falling body of a woman, a scream ringing in her ears. She startles and in turn, once more surprises the child. His eyes open and he must catch sight of her wings, because his small face shows his wonder clear as Aurora’s had the first time she saw the majesty of the Moors.

Diaval steps forwards, joining her kneeling on the sand. “Mistress?”

“…there is something magic in his scar,” she breathes, slowly reaching again. The boy is lax as she lifts him under his armpits, holding him carefully on her lap. His small hands clutch at her dress. “A darkness that should not stain one as young as he.”

“A _darkness?”_ Diaval revolts. “Another cursed child?”

Maleficent hesitates. In her mind, she sees that flash of green once more, knowing it to be the colour of her own magic. But Maleficent does not know this boy or the red-haired woman. _Something is amiss,_ she thinks, looking around the clearing rather than focus on the particulars of her own thoughts.

Hands and footprints lead across the sand to a shadowed ridge, where fallen earth has turned to beach. Below it, rocks form a tightly-knit circle, except where some have been knocked out of place. Immediately, Maleficent breathes an impatient sigh.

“A fairy ring,” she does not reply to Diaval’s question, instead answering another. “The child is not of the Moors.”

Diaval follows her gaze, muttering “Oh,” in a fit of pique. “So we’re going to send him home with nary more than a sigh?”

Gathering the child better in her arms, Maleficent stands tall, hearing the boy suck in a delighted gasp of air, clinging to her dress ever-tighter. “Yes,” says the fae, striding across. It takes less than a moment to rearrange the fallen rocks, the subtle magics of the portal flaring to life as what was severed is repaired.

She places the boy in the circle and watches as he settles on the ground, looking up at her one last time with confusion in his gaze before disappearing.

“Well…that’s dealt with,” says Maleficent, voice stilted. She doesn’t know why – or perhaps she’s denying that she does. The boy held something dark within him and his innocence, much like Aurora’s, was sweet and so very _alive_ when he was carried in her arms.

The split-second of regret as Diaval crosses his arms, staring at the portal as if it were his mortal enemy, is enough for Maleficent to realise she has made a mistake.

 _Hopefully his family were not missing him long,_ she thinks, trying to swallow down the lump in her throat. That green – that _evil._ Maleficent should have looked into the matter further. But there is nothing to be done, now.

She reaches across, dismantling the fairy ring.

_He cannot return._

* * *

Maleficent, upon seeing the familiar child on Aurora’s lap, being entertained by one of the Three Idiots, momentarily wonders if she’s seeing things. But no – it is the boy with hair as black as Diaval’s and eyes like jewels. Next to Aurora’s moon-pale pallor, he is so very dark, his skin the colour of the bark of oak trees, with all the warmth of the sun.

He claps his hands together once, then twice, amused by the fairy’s colourful display of magic, but is silent in his adulations otherwise. When he sees Maleficent walking over the grass towards the Flower Throne, his expression is once more a face of awe.

Aurora follows his gaze, grinning. “Godmother! Look who I have discovered!” Her arm slips around the child’s torso, hugging him in a momentary squeeze. They are like night and day.

“I know this child,” says Maleficent, struggling to contain her frown. “Where was he found?”

“Oh, over there,” Aurora says, unaware of the circumstances of his arrival. Maleficent changes direction, seeking the newest portal which has brought the child to the Moors. With Aurora watching eagerly, neck craned as Maleficent sweeps through the grasses by the lake, she comes to a halt in the middle of the small field. Once again, Maleficent discovers a fairy ring, the grass shorn to the size of a nail inside the circumference of daisies.

Looking around for Diaval – who would have informed her of this newest invasion – Maleficent is irked at not discovering him, wondering where he might be in these strange times. Is it an omen? Are more Humans meant to stumble through fairy rings throughout the realms? Is this child the first of many?

“Aurora,” Maleficent raises her voice, tense. “Bring the child here. It is time to send him home.”

“Home?” Aurora questions, making her way over, regardless. On seeing the fairy ring, she squeals in excitement. “Is this child from elsewhere? Can we visit?”

“We should not,” says Maleficent. _This is not safe. What if enemies arrive? The Flower Throne is one good throw of a spear away!_ “I will be closing it, once the child leaves.”

“Oh,” Aurora’s voice is full of disappointment. She squeezes the child again in a hug. “Does he have to leave so soon?”

“His family will be missing him, beastie,” Maleficent tries to be gentle. Aurora cracks in a moment, hurrying to kiss him on his little forehead, right over the rune-scar. To Maleficent’s confusion, Aurora does not seem to exhibit any untoward reaction to brushing against evil, but she does not make to stop the Queen as she sets the happy child inside the ring.

Again, he disappears.

With a single wave of her hand, the portal dismantles itself like it did the last time and Maleficent grows the grass as long as the rest, eradicating any remnants of a circular body. The portal would just be rebuilt if she left any of it behind.

“A shame he left. I rather liked him,” Aurora muses and a new fear overtakes Maleficent: Aurora having her own offspring.

“Yes! He was quite-” Maleficent struggles for a word that won’t encourage her, “quite _unique._ Children are not usually so well-behaved and noiseless.”

Aurora frowns then, clearly concerned. “I saw, Godmother. It worried me, so. He was scared when I first said hello and did not speak – is that unusual, for one of his age?”

“I would not know,” says Maleficent, uneasy at Aurora’s tale. “Diaval may. He was more of a care-giver to you than I, in those early days.”

“Was he? Was he really?” Aurora turns to her in that eager way of hers, bright eyes pleading for a story. Maleficent takes her arm within her own, wing curling around her as she rests her forehead against Aurora’s, a happiness filling her – a _love._ She does not lie to Aurora once, as she tells all.

“You were a beautiful child. Diaval would feed you and comfort you when you cried, he was quite good at that…”

* * *

The third time is more complicated than the last.

When Maleficent attempts to return the child through his fairy ring of choice, the portal does not power – the other side clearly broken. It presents a conundrum that Maleficent is unsure of how to fix and the moment Diaval is Man-shaped again, she presses the child into his arms and orders him away.

“I will have to find a way to return him by my own power,” she tells him, wary. Her hands clench – there is a fear in her that Diaval notices, his eyes flickering up and down and sharpening in askance. Maleficent presses her hand to the back of the child, who in Diaval’s arm looks somewhat more at home. _It is the hair, most definitely. Bird-nests, the both of them._

“The portal has collapsed. I will need to travel to his home, along the broken pathway. Ascertaining whether it is the correct place to send him is vital.” Maleficent pulls a weak smile to life. “I would certainly not like to send him somewhere he does not belong.”

“You do that, Mistress,” says Diaval, adjusting his grip on the boy and briefly looking down to smile favourably at him. “We’ll keep ourselves busy in the meadow yonder, in wait.”

Maleficent nods, watching them leave. Diaval is already chatting away to the boy, hand brushing through his mop of dark hair fondly. Clearly, her servant is already attached to the child. However, on the wind she hears no reply, her ears sharp – but clearly not sharp enough to catch any verbal cue the boy uses to reply.

Lips turning downwards, Maleficent returns to studying the portal, magic reaching out and out – following the trail left behind by the fairy ring to its inactive counterpart. It’s fading, yet Maleficent can follow it.

And she does.

The moment she steps into the fairy ring, she follows the fading path across the realms, walking further than she thought she might. The void she traverses is dark, pinpricks of light in the distance representing other open doors and worlds that whisper to her, inviting her in; but Maleficent only has one aim and that is the world of the child.

Under her own power, straining as she breaks through the scar left in the walls around the child’s realm, Maleficent forms a fairy ring in a desolate garden. The air leeches her magic like iron itself and a brick, two-floored house awaits her when she appears, knelt in a circle of rejuvenated dandelions.

 _This cannot be his world,_ she thinks, preparing for the worst as she steps out of the ring. Maleficent feels out of place, her wings too big in this tiny garden, boxed in by wooden planks. _You must be stealthy,_ she tells herself, drawing on her patience as she steps forwards, towards the brick house.

Edging around the glass building on the edge of the house, Maleficent peers through a window into the main living space, a foreign room full of sleek cabinets visible beside a dining area. Doubtful, Maleficent bleakly wonders if it the kitchen, sighting two Humans seated on patterned chairs – one fat, a Man of some sort reading a document and the other rail-thin, a woman who stares at a…box? She can hear faint voices from it. But how?

Maleficent abruptly forces herself not to contemplate the strangeness. Other realms have their commodities and this must be one of them. But as her eyes stray downwards, she notices coloured, shining items that resemble toys – and even better, a mess of wooden animals.

 _They must be his family,_ she thinks, assuming the toys are meant for the boy in the Moors. Then a pudgy body the size of five chickens put together rolls into view, screaming a war-cry as it slams one of the shining toys into the grouping of wooden animals. Maleficent flinches. _And there is the reason the boy is so quiet. There is already a loud child in the vicinity._

Turning away from the house – assuming the loud child is to be punished for his noise-making, which logically, would have been previously seen by the boy in the Moors, giving Maleficent a sure-fire reason as to why he is so quiet himself – Maleficent returns to the circle of dandelions. The portal is structurally sound and she has found the home of the boy.

Returning to the openness of the Moors, Maleficent is first greeted to the sight of Diaval crowing loudly, laughing as he chases the boy through the tall grass. They’re both smiling widely and when the boy trips into the dirt, he twists onto his back to eagerly welcome Diaval, who scoops him up and spins him around. It is ridiculous.

And Maleficent desperately want to show the boy what _real_ flying is like.

 _The family were not concerned…though, it would not take long for them to notice he was missing, if they checked their garden._ To be perfectly honest, despite her own preferences, Maleficent can understand the safety in letting a child roam unaccompanied in a garden such as that, with fences stopping any wayward child or creature from escaping.

Weighing options in her mind – wanting to keep him and yet, wishing him home where he belongs – Maleficent approaches the duo, Diaval sobering at the sight of her.

“Is it time?” he asks.

“…not quite,” Maleficent eventually answers, brushing the boy’s jaw with a single clawed finger. She smiles, teeth attempting to show in a grin when he grabs at her hand. “A firm grip,” she pronounces, letting him wave it about for an extended period of time, before finally taking it back – along with the boy, stealing him from Diaval’s arms.

Her servant pouts. Maleficent pouts right back, mirthful. Diaval sighs, pointing at her, “You’re up to something.”

“Maybe,” she shrugs, wings flapping a few times. Diaval follows their motions, raising his eyebrows and then opening his mouth to speak. Maleficent turns him into a raven before he can. She gives into her impulses, wrapping the boy against her front in a conjured brown wrap, his small hands snagging in her dress. Fluttering in the air still, Diaval squawks, as if asking what she is doing.

In silent answer, Maleficent bats her wings, readying herself for take-off. Her Raven lets out a loud noise of excitement, soaring up into the air ahead of her.

Murmuring to the boy, “Time for your first flight, child,” Maleficent tightens her grip around him and leaves the ground behind. She protects his head and face from the winds until they – she, the child and Diaval – are far above the Moors, following the air currents around in circles.

Maleficent might usually do aerial manoeuvres that test her control and power, but the strange responsibility that is holding onto the child in her arms keeps her focus clear. He does not scream or wriggle – rather, he lets out his first audible noise, a gasp of excitement. She twirls lightly, keeping her speed slow and level.

Diaval, of course, is not as limited as she. He does his tricks and loops, his very own mating dance. Maleficent has seen him do many of those, of late, though she does not know who he is trying to impress; it’s not very often that birds willingly fly in her vicinity. The child, at least, kicks excitedly at her hips whenever he catches sight of the vain bird.

However, the experience cannot last forever. Maleficent knows not of Human children for sure, but she does not doubt that their stomachs cannot hold up to the effects of gravity like the children of winged beings can; she flies back down to the meadow before the child can regurgitate his lunch and it more than melancholy for it.

Time is fleeting.

The child’s eyes droop with sleep when she removes him from the sling, bony fingers slipping away from her dress. Maleficent feels a twinge of loss at the sight. Oh, how she wishes she could have done this with Aurora – her goddaughter would have loved flying, at this age, asked for it again and again.

 _The most this boy has done is breathe,_ she thinks. Her eyes stray to the curse scar on his brow once again, fingers edging around the shallow cut. It does not weep, but it still does not heal, regardless. Maleficent doubts it ever will.

“Home for you, now,” she murmurs, then delivers him to the fairy ring. When he disappears for the final time, her heart aches and not even Diaval’s silent companionship can settle it. She strokes his gleaming feathers in sorrow. “Would it be cruel to wish he returned?”

Diaval’s answer caw is just as mournful as her voice.

* * *

It is a long time before they see the boy again – two winters or more, the snows coming and going. The ground is still hard, frost clinging to the leaves, grasses and bushes, when another fairy ring deposits him into their care.

But this time is different.

The boy walks instead of crawls, looking at the Moors with an intelligence that didn’t exist in him before. His frown pulls a well-worn crease in his brow and when he tugs his over-large blue shirt around himself, his hands are wrapped in bandages.

Maleficent does not hear of his arrival for at least an hour, by which time the boy has been driven from a rocky path in the forest into the boughs of a tree. Fairies buzz in their air around him, keeping their distance, while the wingless denizens of the Moors whisper in quiet concert on the hard earth below.

At her arrival, several yards above the boy in the tree, there is a minor dip in noise. The Moorfolk are clearly awaiting her directive; some still seem to remember the last time the boy entered the Moors unaccompanied and stay back for his sake rather than their own.

Clearing her throat, Maleficent says, “Good afternoon.”

The boy nearly falls off his branch, eyes whipping around to find the source of the noise. It takes him too long to look up, by which time Maleficent has assured herself of whom he is – time has not changed him _that_ much.

“You have been here before,” she notes out loud, smiling without meaning to. “Your luck with fairy rings is unprecedented.”

His green gaze travels along her wings, which she unfurls so he can see their true majesty. The spark to his expression proves that he recognises them, the shadow of awe warm and familiar.

“We went flying the last time you came here, but I returned you home afterwards. The Moors are not for Humans, child,” Maleficent tells him, moving across and down to the same tree he hides in, the boughs shaking as her weight drops against them. The boy nearly loses his grip again – but they are close, now and Maleficent reaches over with ease, one arm snaking around his tiny waist to pull him against her chest. His hands wave about briefly, before settling on her shoulder.

Maleficent smiles euphorically at him. She says to him genuinely, “It is wonderful to see you again.”

The boy’s lips part slowly and the words that tumble out are hesitant. “Not…a dream?”

“No,” croons the Dark Fae, “Not a dream.”

She takes him to ground level, walking through the group of curious Moorfolk with the boy set firmly on her hip. Maleficent marvels at his features, so changed since they last met – his jaw sharper and his forehead bigger. His legs are twice as long as they were before.

When he begins to shiver in her grasp, Maleficent conjures a cloak for him, wrapping it around his shoulders and body. He must have been near-death from cold, in that tree. “It is winter,” she reminds him, “You should wear more than you are, now, lest the snows take you.”

The boy puckers his lip, some clear confidence in him as he says, “No coats. Freaks don’t get coats.”

Maleficent screeches to a halt.

Her reply is non-existent. There is nothing she can say to that. The boy doesn’t question his own words, only pulling the cloak tighter around him and tucking his head into the crook of her neck, nose wet and warm against her skin. Her hair tugs under the prison of his head – but Maleficent cannot find it in herself to care.

_Freaks don’t get coats._

“You are…” she starts, trailing off. She wants to curse his family – for they are clearly the perpetrators, here. That fat man and stick of a woman. Clearly, they are at fault. Maleficent scolds herself for not seeing their true worth – the child in her arms has been touched by darkness, yes, but that is no excuse for cruelty. Did they not have another child? She dreads to think of how that one is treated.

Maleficent closes her eyes, pressing a hand against the young boy’s head, as if to further shield him from the world. She takes him, silent, to the cavernous home she built for Aurora in the roots of a tree. Her goddaughter is away, seeing to the needs of Perceforest at the moment, leaving her home empty for Maleficent’s use – not that Maleficent would live anywhere but her nest. Indeed, the only resident so far that Aurora’s den has seen is Diaval, who snores away peacefully in her wide bed in Man-shape.

“Diaval,” Maleficent calls out his name, waking him. She waits for him to sit up and observe the situation before speaking further. “The boy-child has returned.”

“…he has?” asks Diaval, standing and making his way over, twisting his head sideways over her wings – getting impossibly close, closer than anyone in the world is allowed to get – so he can look at the child. Maleficent can see him looking back at Diaval in her peripheral vision, Diaval smiling at whatever he sees. “Aye, that’s you, isn’t it? Eyes like gems. What brings you to the Moors, young one? Come here.”

And Diaval takes the child from her, who makes a noise of confusion as Diaval sets him upright on his own hip, their eyelines level. “Oi, what’s that for?” Diaval is quick to ask, taking one of his hands in his own and kissing it. “You and I are friends, emerald. No need to be scared of Diaval, no.” Her Raven-Man only seems to notice the linen circling his palms after he finishes speaking.

“Hmph,” Maleficent purses her lips, however, disliking the boy being stolen from her grasp, especially when the words _freaks don’t get coats_ is floating through her mind. Irritated by the very concept, Maleficent doesn’t pause before sending the child into an enchanted sleep, Diaval reacting immediately to the slumping boy.

“Why’d you do that? What’s the matter?” Her Raven-Man frowns deeply on seeing her expression, resting his head against his shoulder.

“He spoke,” says Maleficent, repeating the deplorable phrase in a hush. Diaval’s anger becomes clear, his eyes sharpening and his body stilling, a danger exuding from him that Maleficent admires, in a dreadful sort of way. “I do not know what to think.”

“Well, I do,” he replies, holding the boy protectively, as if the child were his own. “We keep him!”

“… _keep him?”_ Maleficent repeats carefully.

“Aye.” Diaval’s mind will not be changed. “His family aren’t suitable and he keeps finding his way to us. It’s fate. Magic has drawn him here, plain and simply. That has to be the answer to why so many times he’s come through the fairy rings.”

“We cannot-” she tries, the idea becoming acceptable in her mind too fast. Again, she worries for the other child – but Maleficent is not of that world. That this boy has found his way to the Moors is pure luck on his part.

Diaval sways on the spot, gently rocking the boy. It does not matter to the Raven that the child is spelled asleep; his stress converts into mother-henning, his anger doing naught and so, instead, his upset becoming his primary reaction. Maleficent briefly reaches out to him – to Diaval – to brush a stray lock of hair behind his ear. The movement turns the Raven’s gaze towards her.

“Maleficent,” he murmurs, “We cannot let him return.”

“No, we cannot,” Maleficent agrees quietly. The magnitude of their decision does not weigh lightly. Aurora will be delighted – she will not mind sharing her hall with this new child of the Moors. With that thought, Maleficent turns away from them both, magic already at work.

In the dirt-and-root wall, a hollow forms. Inside is a plinth – a bed, that she makes tall and long, suitable for a growing Human – with an ivy curtain hiding the inside from sight, thick moss for bedding growing in wait. Maleficent pauses only for the time it takes her to walk over, brushing the curtain aside to watch her golden magic form carvings in the hollow walls. Animals, stars, fairies – Maleficent will admit that maybe she’s getting carried away.

“Oh, a beautiful nest,” mumbles Diaval, a twinge of _something_ to his voice. Perhaps he expected to stay with their new fledgling when he slept. Maleficent imagines that it may happen, yet – even Aurora climbed into bed with those infernal idiots, once or twice. It is not unthinkable that the boy may which for Diaval to join him in sleep, like any child seeking their guardian.

Without quite knowing why, she widens the entrance to the hollow before Diaval climbs in to put the boy to rest. The blanket Maleficent conjured grows at her wish, becoming a large, thick comforter in a deep, warm brown that looks faintly golden.

“Children need naps, right? We can wake him up later, explain everything,” Diaval says, almost to himself, but not quite. Maleficent tilts her head in agreement anyway. “What is his name, do you think?”

“I have no idea – we had best make him one.”

“Emerald,” Diaval immediately offers, “for his lovely eyes!”

Maleficent huffs in disagreement. “We are not naming him after a _jewel_.”

“Then what? Aurora is named for the sky,” he replies, ruminating over the prospects. “We did first see him by the stream.”

“I do not like the names for rivers of those sort for a child. Brook and gully and burn,” Maleficent shakes her head.

Diaval frowns. “A Human name, perhaps?”

Maleficent snorts, “A child of the Moors? I think not.”

“My thorny mistress – it is but a name, one that he may yet want to change.” Her Raven clasps his limp hand within his own, rubbing warmth into the blueness of him. “He is the tricksy sort, who finds himself in places he should not be.”

“Briar.”

The Raven-Man looks up at her sharply and Maleficent realises she said the word aloud. Briar – like the thorns of a rose. It seems quite apt, suddenly, for the child has indeed caught them both in his grasp without mercy or quarter given. _Briar,_ she mouths the word, Diaval repeating it after her. _Our Briarheart,_ thinks the Dark Fae, before reaching across for his and Diaval’s entwined hands. The reason for stretching the hollow out now becomes clear, as her wings merely scrape the edges rather than become stuck.

Diaval’s hand is warm below hers and below that, she can feel the small fingers and palm of Briar’s.

“Briar,” her Raven repeats softly. It is like a promise.


End file.
